1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a paper sheet running-out mechanism, and for example, relates to a mechanism for automatically running out accumulated bills for use in an automated teller machine (called ATM) used in financial institutions.
2. Description of Related Art
The ATM has a bill handling mechanism for receiving and paying bills from/to a user. The mechanism has a bill receipt/payment port for discharging a bill to be paid to a user or charging a bill to be received and running out received bills one by one; a bill discrimination section for discriminating a bill to be received or paid; a temporal storing section for temporarily storing a received bill; a reject box for storing a rejected bill that did not meet a predetermined standard in the bill discrimination section; a recycle box for storing and keeping a received bill, and running out the bill as a bill to be paid; and a bill carrying path being connected to the respective sections or storages to carry the bill.
Recently, this type of bill handling mechanism is used even in foreign ATMs, and required to handle foreign bills having various sizes, in addition, required to be set on an outer wall in accordance with operation of the ATM. In particular, when the ATM is set on the outer wall, as the bill receipt/payment port for delivering and receiving a bill to/from a user, a mechanism in a presenter method is desirably used to prevent invasion of rain, dust or the like from the outside, in which a bill is horizontally put in and out through a thin slot-like port.
However, in the paper sheet running-out mechanism being horizontally disposed, bills each having a different length in a running-out direction are sometimes randomly accumulated. For example, in the case that a bill accumulated in a top (hereinafter, called top bill) is smaller than a bill accumulated in a second top (called second accumulated bill), and accumulated in the back in the running-out direction, when a pick roller passes the top bill to a running-out section, an event may occur, that is, the top bill cannot be passed to the running-out section in one revolution of the pick roller and consequently cannot be separated by a feed roller. Moreover, the top bill and the second accumulated bill may be passed to the running-out section by passing force of the pick roller at the same time, and the second accumulated bill may plunge into the running-out section before the top bill, consequently the accumulated, two bills may be run out together.
As a technique for overcoming this type of difficulties, for example, JP-A-2002-347961 discloses a bill running-out mechanism, in which the mechanism has a flexible, radial member disposed in the back of a pick rollerhaft in a running-out direction separately from the pick rollerhaft, a stopper roller disposed on a feed rollerhaft, which has a circumferential face made of metal being sufficiently lowly frictional compared with a portion of a running-out rotation phase of a feed roller to prevent running-out of a bill in a phase other than the running-out rotation phase, and a gate roller disposed in a position opposed to the stopper roller, and only a top bill is pre-passed into a running-out section by a flexible, radial member so that a front edge of the bill butts against a circumferential face of the stopper roller, thereby right and left portions of the front edge of the bill are aligned, and then the top bill first plunges into the running-out section, consequently only the top bill is securely separated.